When Broken Is Easily Fixed
by Aisling-Siobhan
Summary: [Tony/Loki] If only people were as easily fixed as machines. But they weren't and they never would be, though that didn't mean Loki wouldn't keep trying.


I'm filling prompts because I really don't have the energy to work on the longer fics where I have to remember what has already happened and needs to happen and yeah. Sick, so, excuses!

1: .com(/)post(/)32786819685: _If only people were as easily fixed as machines._

2: fyeahalexxheather (at Tumblr)'s l**yrical prompt: **_You bleed just to know you're alive_.

"When Broken Is Easily Fixed"

**Disclaimer: ** Avengers, Thor, Loki, etc belong to Marvel, Stan Lee, et co. I make no money from this and own nothing, don't sue.

**Summary: ** [Tony/Loki] _If only people were as easily fixed as machines.__ But they weren't and they never would be, though that didn't mean Loki wouldn't keep trying. _

**Warnings: ** Slash. Tony/Loki. Post-Avengers. Violence. Language. AU. Lots of Loki feels. Angst. Tumblr Prompt. Character Death (sort of). Magical coma. Soul Gem.

**Rating: ** R.

**A/N**: This turned out to be so much longer than I planned.

_XXX_

**Words: **2,899

**Chapter 1**

Loki had grown soft. In his softness, he had grown weak and those others who waited in his shadows for the chance to usurp him had surged forward like a tidal wave and tried to wipe him from the face of the Earth. He had held fast, sure and strong, because he was Loki of Asgard and Loptr of Jötunheimr and Lucas Stark of Midgard and he had never been fond of doing what others expected him to do.

When they tried to defeat him, he fought back twice as hard. When they tried to kill him he refused to die, and killed them instead. It had taken five years and an uneasy alliance with the Avengers but Loki had finally defeated Thanos. The Mad Titan was dead, gifted happily into the arms of Death who took him, but not as her own for she had moved on too. When the Silver Surfer came, the Earth fought back against him too, and against the Skrulls and the Kree and the Dark Elves.

Somewhere in the middle of all of that, Loki had fallen in love with a mortal. It was this that made him weak now, complacent and content. No longer did he jump at shadows, or glance at all those who walked passed him with suspicious glares; he didn't immediately assume treachery when someone was late to meet with him, and there was no betrayal in his thoughts of his new family. The Avengers were his family, Thor his brother once more and Anthony Stark his husband.

The Jotnar came to Midgard, to take their long awaited vengeance against the Asgardian who had slain their King many years ago, but Loki fought back against them, side by side with his Iron Man and his brother, Thor. They tried again, this time targeting only the mortal and avoiding the two Æsir who they knew where back on Asgard for Thor's own marriage preparations. But they failed again, because Tony still had the Avengers to watch his back, and the Avengers were his family too.

But Amora knew Loki better than all of his other foes, and Amora had access to the dungeons of Asgard and the armoury and the throne room. She came one night to Midgard, while Loki and Tony were sleeping with their arms wrapped around one another, Tony's mouth pressed against Loki's throat, and she pressed a shining stone against the human's forehead. His breath stopped for a moment, long enough for Loki to shift in his sleep, perturbed, but then it started up again and Amora laughed under her breath as she stole from the room, heading down the corridor to the only other room on that floor. Inside, she leant over Thor, frowning at the blonde man who had time and again refused to love her. If she could not have him, she'd be damned if she let Sif, and so she pressed the stone to his forehead too. Like Tony, Thor stopped breathing for a moment, before taking a calm breath, as if nothing had happened.

Amora brushed her blonde hair back over her shoulders and smiled. The stone in her hand grew brighter, swirling with red and blue now when it had been transparent upon her arrival. She pocketed it, tapping the outside of the fabric to double check, before she disappeared in a flash of green sparks.

Thor didn't stir when she left, even though the sparks were bright enough to alert Jarvis to a foreign presence (her magic having hidden her earlier), and Thor didn't stir later when Steve came to shake him awake. He had failed to assemble, as had Tony, but they left Loki to deal with his husband, shaking his shoulders frantically and shouting in his face. Loki started with threats, the "if you don't get up right now I'll never speak to you again" kind, and ended with whispered pleas, murmured in desperation, of "please, please, please get up!"

But he didn't. Not then, and not the next day, or the day after either. Together, what was left of the Avengers watched the security footage, able to see Amora but not what she was doing, and Loki was so angry with himself for sleeping through it because he had been right there wrapped around Tony while she hurt him and he had done nothing to stop her. He had grown weak, his love and fondness of the mortals softening him in the way it had softened Thor too: no longer did they live to spill the blood of their enemies, now they were content to be, happy and safe and welcomed home by the same people every day and night, and now two of them were gone, the two most important people of Loki's family and he was not happy about it.

Never had he allowed anyone to get away with taking his things, never would he walk away from such an obvious challenge. Amora wanted to best him? Well she was welcome to try, but this underhanded cowardly strike would only work against her, because Loki was angry and even without Thor and Tony he had the rest of the Avengers and he had Asgard, because Thor was their future king along with being Loki's brother.

It was Sif, Thor's bride-to-be, who had noticed the missing Soul Gem in the treasure vault of Asgard. She had been ordered to find something, anything, that could help Thor and following Odin's instructions, she had searched and found an empty pedestal.

Loki glanced at her, listened to her explanation, and though he appeared calm and composed, inside he felt like dying. Thunder roared in his ears, and terror raced up his spine and he held his breath, praying to each of the Norns in turn that Sif did not know what he knew of the Soul Gem.

"It must be broken to release the soul it has captured." She averted her eyes, refusing to look at Loki who insisted on having this meeting in his and Tony's bedroom, afraid but refusing to say it in those words to be too far away from his husband. She couldn't look at Tony either, especially after Bruce pointed out that you could only break the Gem once. That was a problem, of course, one Loki had realised the moment he knew of its involvement. Amora had stolen _two_ souls.

They talked and they plotted and each of them did what they could to make Tony and Thor comfortable, though neither man could realised any difference. It was as if they were sleeping, unable to move or think or speak for themselves. U fed Tony through a tube, the machine fiddling with another machine that made the wires hiss with electricity and made liquid course through Tony's veins. Butterfingers whizzed around the room, attempting to clean up or fluff Tony's pillow, occasionally scratching Tony's face though that at least Loki could fix.

The longer Amora evaded them, the more Asgard got involved. The demanded Thor be the one awoken, because though the Man of Iron was a hero and Loki's husband, Thor was their future King (and though they did not say it, it was implied that Loki wouldn't ever be). SHIELD didn't want to take sides, didn't want to offend the Asgardians who could crush a human with one swat like one would a fly, but Pepper, Happy and Rhodey were Tony's family, more than just an Avenger or a friend or a buddy, they had been there for Tony long before anyone even knew Thor was real. They wanted to save Tony, because they were sorry about Thor, they really were, but Tony was more important to them. There were so many great things left for Tony to do, so many people to save and help, so many things left to learn and discover and the world needed Tony Stark in it.

Loki's world needed Tony Stark in it.

Thor had been his brother for as long as Loki could remember, and Thor would always be his brother, (ignoring those few years in the middle where Loki had tried to kill him and overthrow the Earth), but Thor would live forever. The magic of the Soul Gem might fade, or they might discover a new way to save him, but Thor had the time to waste waiting for that to happen, and Tony did not.

Loki had always been greedy and selfish. Everyone knew it, they had accused him of it for centuries and yet none but one thought of that when they decided that Tony Stark would be left instead of Thor. Loki sought to steal the Gem from Amora, but someone else got there before him.

Frigga was selfish too, almost as much as Loki was, because he had to have learnt it from somewhere, and this was her _son_'s life in the balance. Not just her other son's lover, but her _son_ and she was sorry for the pain it would cause Loki but the mortal would have died anyway and Loki would have moved on, but she would never be able to replace Thor.

Amora had escaped him and Loki had made his way back to the tower, angry and frustrated and ignoring the tears on his cheeks. He had tried, he had really tried and had come so close but when he caught Amora there had been no Gem and she had wriggled free of his hold before he could question where it was. Someone had stolen it from her, Loki could tell that much by the state of her, but who he couldn't even begin to guess, because who would want the Gem as badly as he did to be willing to go against Odin's orders, against SHIELD's?

Thor was sitting on the sofa beside his mother when Loki entered the living room. It took him a moment to notice them, because it was not an unusual occurrence to have someone wait for him on the couch with their arms folded and sad smiles on their faces. He was halfway out of the room, headed straight to Tony to apologise again for letting Amora escape him, when he stopped dead, head turning slowly to glance over his shoulder at the face of someone who should have been sleeping still too.

"Thor?" He whispered as his legs gave out under him. He crashed to the floor, only then noticing the other Avengers crowding around the kitchen island, each of them frowning and trying to look happy to see Thor simultaneously. Pepper made no secret of her displeasure, glaring at Thor with every dark part of herself that she could call upon and Rhodey could barely look at him without sneering. Bruce was green around the gills, hands clenching desperately at his sides and shaking and Natasha and Clint both looked as stoic as ever, but Steve looked like he'd been sucker-punched and it was taking all of his willpower not to fall to his knees the way Loki had. Loki had known, they had all known except for Tony, that Steve had loved him just as much as Loki had, though he had been a good enough person to back off when he had realised Tony would never reciprocate.

"I am sorry, brother," Thor whispered. Frigga said nothing; she reached out to hold Thor's hand, squeezing it softly between her own and she led him towards his brother. Her eyes watered, struck with guilt at the sight of her youngest son in pain, but she bit her tongue because she did not regret her actions, even as she handed over the broken shards of the Soul Gem, dropping them at Loki's feet.

Steve had to help him up, both of them clinging to one another as they stood over Tony's bedside, trying to ignore the pointless words that Thor offered them. "There may be another way, we will just look harder," he said, over and over until Loki couldn't bear it anymore. Magic lashed out at him, throwing Thor clear across the room, and Loki destroyed everything in his path, attacked everyone who got in his way, and eventually Frigga had to force Thor back to Asgard to keep Loki from killing him.

A year passed. And then two. But Loki remained by Tony's bedside.

Pepper put Rescue on the shelf, and donned the Iron Man suit instead, because the world needed Iron Man more. War Machine took Rescue's place and Loki took Thor's because he was now King of Asgard and through no fault of his own had lost the camaraderie he had once shared with his Midgardian friends.

Loki returned to Asgard once every six months, though he kept his distance from Thor and Frigga. He searched through the libraries, questioned the scholars and magicians, bribed Iðunn and fed her apples to Tony. But nothing woke him up. The apples gave his skin a glow, ironed the wrinkles from his face and washed the grey from his hair. After two of them, Tony looked twenty years younger and Loki had twenty more years to spend searching for a cure.

But two years was a long time, and muscles atrophy and stomachs concave and though Tony looked younger he also began to look like he was starving to death. He was grey like a corpse, and his hair was long though they kept his nails cut short, and it was like looking at the body of someone who had been mummified before burial and later dug up. Loki hated it, the fear he felt every time Tony's breathing stuttered, the way his eyelids never flickered, and he started searching for ways to prove that Tony still lived.

Bruce had caught him once, cutting shallow lines into the skin of Tony's arms; small cuts that wept blood for seconds before sealing themselves up; later thick slashes, deep and down that spilled red onto the sheets that would need to be changed after Loki had healed the wounds, but that gave Loki an excuse to bath Tony, to touch him and know that though his mind did not his body continued to respond.

"What are you doing?"

"I need to know," Loki had told him softly, knife still pressed against grey flesh. "If he bleeds I know he's alive."

He lived, though he did not wake, and Loki kept searching and feeding his husband golden apples, as the years passed and the Avengers aged or were killed in battle, but Tony was Asgardian now in the ways that mattered and like Thor he could not wither of old age, not for a very long time. The machines survived with them, U and Butterfingers, Jarvis and Dummy: they lived in the tower with Loki and Tony, long after all of the others had passed away, and Loki had long ago lost interest in the great-grandchildren of Bruce and Betty Ross, long after Frigga had come back to beg his forgiveness, whispering how sorry she was, how she missed him. But she was sorry for his pain, not for her choice, so Loki chose not to forgive her, because along with being selfish and greedy he was spiteful too, and his mother should have known how long a grudge he could hold and how terrible his wrath would be should Tony die (centuries from now perhaps, or millennia maybe) without Loki being able to save him.

So they stayed in their tower, while new superheroes existed and defended and died. New villains came and were defeated, and Amora never dared return to Midgard, nor did Thor though he continued to search, as his brother searched, for a way to save Tony Stark.

"Whir!" Dummy made that annoying little noise he made every time he broke something, the robotic version of "oops". Loki glanced at him, a few extra lines around his mouth and eyes and the very beginnings of silver in the sideburns of his hair.

"Clean it up, Dummy," Loki croaked, voice not used to speaking any more.

Jarvis ran the household, and the machines fixed each other when there was a need to do so, because Jarvis still retained all of the knowledge Tony had given him, and each of their original blueprints. Loki healed Tony of his bedsores and the cuts that his creations sometimes left on his skin when they were trying to help him, and when appliances broke, the robots would fix those too because they couldn't fix their creator.

The robotic arm twisted, nudging first at the broken alarm clock, before gripping it tight. Pushing and pulling and twisting, tightening things that needed to be tightened and tucking back in wires that had fallen loose and Loki watched in silence until the alarm clock was good as new, blinking red numbers at him when he turned to stare at that instead.

The God turned his face away with a sigh, looking back at his husband who remained trapped in an enchanted sleep and probably always would. The alarm clock's snooze function went off again, this time un-silenced by Dummy's arm; reminding Loki that twenty-four hours had passed and it was time to cut into Tony's arm, to remind himself that his husband still bleed, still lived, even if he could not be fixed.

_If only people were as easily fixed as machines._

_**The End**_

There are two other prompts that I've been given today, but I need to take a break and a shower (before my family start hogging the bathroom), so enjoy, and I'll see you soon I hope.


End file.
